Lost in the Endless Scroll – Until a Small Ritual Renewed My Love for Books

As a youngster, I devoured novels until my vision grew hazy. When my exams came around, I exercised the stamina of a monk, studying for lengthy periods without a break. But in recent years, I’ve observed that ability for deep concentration dissolve into infinite browsing on my device. My attention span now shrinks like a snail at the touch of a finger. Engaging with books for enjoyment feels less like nourishment and more like endurance training. And for someone who creates content for a profession, this is a professional hazard as well as something that left me disheartened. I wanted to restore that mental elasticity, to stop the mental decline.

Therefore, about a twelve months back, I made a small vow: every time I came across a term I didn’t understand – whether in a novel, an article, or an overheard discussion – I would research it and write it down. Not a thing elaborate, no elegant notebook or fountain pen. Just a running list maintained, ironically, on my smartphone. Each week, I’d devote a few minutes reading the list back in an effort to lodge the word into my recall.

The record now covers almost 20 pages, and this tiny habit has been subtly transformative. The benefit is less about showing off with obscure adjectives – which, let’s face it, can make you appear unbearable – and more about the cognitive exercise of the ritual. Each time I search for and note a term, I feel a faint stretch, as though some neglected part of my mind is stirring again. Even if I never deploy “phantom” in dialogue, the very act of noticing, logging and reviewing it interrupts the slide into inactive, superficial attention.

Additionally, there's a journalling aspect to it – it functions as something of a journal, a log of where I’ve been reading, what I’ve been pondering and who I’ve been hearing.

Not that it’s an easy routine to keep up. It is frequently very impractical. If I’m reading on the tube, I have to pause mid-paragraph, take out my device and enter “millennialism” into my Google doc while trying not to elbow the person pressed against me. It can reduce my reading to a frustrating speed. (The e-reader, with its built-in dictionary, is much easier). And then there’s the reviewing (which I frequently neglect to do), dutifully scrolling through my expanding vocabulary collection like I’m preparing for a vocabulary test.

In practice, I incorporate perhaps five percent of these words into my daily conversation. “unreformable” made the cut. “Lugubrious” too. But the majority of them remain like museum pieces – admired and catalogued but rarely handled.

Nevertheless, it’s rendered my thinking much sharper. I find myself turning less often for the same tired selection of adjectives, and more frequently for something precise and muscular. Few things are more satisfying than unearthing the exact term you were seeking – like locating the lost puzzle piece that snaps the picture into place.

At a time when our gadgets siphon off our attention with merciless efficiency, it feels subversive to use my own as a instrument for slow thinking. And it has restored to me something I worried I’d forfeited – the pleasure of exercising a mind that, after a long time of slack browsing, is finally waking up again.